Hold On To Hope: Black Saturday, My Story

By Bronwyn R Wakelin

Black Saturday, 7 February 2009, changed our lives forever. Total loss of our home, the only things left were the clothes on our back.

Fleeing for our lives, we saw God's protection over our family as we drove through the flames with our car melting around us. There were falling trees and death all around us but despite this, there was tot

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bronwyn Ruth Wakelin
• Release date: Jul 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645305265

Bronwyn R Wakelin

I'm 56 years old and am a survivor of the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.Im married to Darren and we have 2 boys, Jordan and Samuel. They are both married so I now have 2 incredible daughter in laws, Taleisha and Madison. I have a beautiful 3year old grandson, Andy and another grandchild due in early November. I am a Registered Nurse of 36 years and am currently working as a practice nurse in the Whittlesea Medical Clinic 2 days a week. This book has been a dream of mine and has been 4 years in the making.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Lead Up

It has been called Black Saturday, and it is such an appropriate description of the day that changed our lives forever.

The day was Saturday the 7th of February 2009. It was so hot, 42 degrees, and very windy. I drove across the top of the mountain to pick up my oldest son Jordan from the Mitre10 hardware store at 2 pm, where he was finishing his shift. The threat of fire in summer was always there at Kinglake, with the bush tinder dry, but on a day like today, with very high temperatures and high winds, the threat was more real.

As I looked across towards Melbourne, there was a huge black cloud of smoke blocking the view of Melbourne. I remember feeling worried as it felt so ominous.

Life was normal in the weeks that led up to that fateful day. It was summer, so we were experiencing hot days. As a family, we would make day trips to the beach or go to Warburton to cool off in the river. I enjoyed summer.

Many news reports were saying that we were in the worst weather conditions for bushfires, but we weren’t alarmed; we had heard this before. Friends had asked us if we would leave home for the day, just in case. Darren’s response was, ‘Do we pack up our things and leave for the beach every time we hear reports that it will be a bad day?’ The answer was, ‘No.’

The week prior to Black Saturday, I was doing my regular shifts at the Austin Hospital, Darren had his IT business, and he worked from home. Jordan and Samuel had just started their first week back at school. Jordan was away at a study camp for year 12 in the city, and Samuel was in his first week of grade Five at Plenty Valley Christian College. Life was going along normally.

On the Wednesday of that week, news reports were saying it was going to be appalling weather conditions on Saturday the 7th of February. Again, nothing we hadn’t heard before. It was reported that a significant heat wave was affecting the Southeast of Australia.

From the 28th to the 30th of January, Melbourne had broken temperature records of three consecutive days above 43 degrees Celsius, with temperatures getting up to 45.1 degrees Celsius on the 30th of January. This was the third hottest day in the city’s history. On the 7th of February, Victoria, including Melbourne, recorded the highest temperature since records began in 1859.

On the 6th of February, the Premier of Victoria issued an extreme weather warning on the news for Saturday the 7th of February 2009. He said, ‘It’s just as bad a day as you can imagine, and on top of that, the state is tinder dry. People need to exercise real common sense tomorrow.’ It was expected to be the worst day in the history of the State. We were unaware that 358 firefighters from the Country Fire Authority (CFA ) and the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSA) had been deployed across the state on Friday evening, the 6th of February, in anticipation of the extreme weather conditions the next day.

On Saturday the 7th of February, hot North westerly winds blew over 100kms per hour. The temperature had reached 46.4 degrees Celsius in the afternoon, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the city. Humidity levels had dropped to 2%. These were weather conditions for a perfect storm. Around midday, wind conditions were reaching their peak. A SWER line had fallen in Kilmore East, sparking a fire that would become known as the deadliest and most intense fire storm experienced in Australia post-1788 history.

We were unaware that fires had been sparked across the entire state, and it was soon coming for us.

Chapter 2

What Seemed Like A Normal Day

It was to be a fateful day. Driving up to meet my son Jordan, I did feel an ominous dread in the pit of my stomach, but I had no idea of what was to come. When I arrived at Mitre10, I asked Jordan if they had heard anything about the fire coming near us because it didn’t look or feel right to me. He reassured me that the radio was saying it was heading away from us and that it was the smoke from the Kilmore fire. He said that all fire hoses and fire pumps were sold out, but he said I didn’t need to worry.

When we arrived home, I told my husband Darren about the menacing black cloud obscuring our view of Melbourne and that I felt something was wrong. He reassured me that the internet and radio were saying the fire was nowhere near us, and I didn’t have to worry. So I relaxed a little.

We were having my cousins over for a BBQ dinner, so I prepared salad and put the roast pork on the barbecue. They rang around 4 pm to say that they probably shouldn't come up due to the closeness of the fires to Whittlesea, where they lived. I reassured them, ‘Don’t worry. It’s safe up here, but if you feel that it’s best if you don’t come, then you shouldn’t. We can have the roast pork for lunch after church tomorrow’. We agreed that roast pork after church sounded good, and we all continued to relax in our air-conditioned houses.

The power went off around 5 pm. Darren fell asleep on the brick floor because it was cool. My youngest son Samuel and I were lying on the couch as he showed me the game he was playing on his Game Boy. Jordan had been playing his guitar and fell asleep on his bed. No power meant no TV and no air conditioner. When the power went off, I remember saying to Darren, ‘At least we can still eat dinner because the pork is cooking on the barbecue outside, and the salads are already prepared and in the fridge.’

We lit candles for light because we were used to the power going out in Kinglake. Everything in our house ran on electricity, and because of this, we couldn’t get water up to the house because it was pumped by an electric pump. No electricity also meant that we were no longer able to track the fire's progress on the Internet via the computer.

We weren’t panicking because it wasn’t the first time we had experienced fires in the area. We had fires in the area in January 2006.

It had been a hot January, and we had just arrived home from a weekend away in Lorne, enjoying family time away at the beach. We hadn’t really been watching any news while we were away. Fires had been burning in Kinglake for the previous week, started by lightning strikes and my friend Cornelia, who lived in Kinglake Central, about five km from our house, had been monitoring the progress of the fires that she could see from her house.